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Vol: 52(66) No: 2 / June 2007        

Robust and Optimal Control of Packet Loss Probability for MPLS VPN Services with a Reactive Estimator
Dongli Zhang
School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, 161 Louis Pasteur, P.O. Box 450, Stn. A, Colonel By Hall, Room B-306, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada, phone: +1 (613) 562-5800 ex, e-mail: dzhang@site.uottawa.ca, web: http://www.ncct.uottawa.ca
Dan Ionescu
School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, 161 Louis Pasteur, P.O. Box 450, Stn. A, Colonel By Hall, Room B-306, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada, e-mail: ionescu@site.uottawa.ca, web: http://www.ncct.uottawa.ca


Keywords: Packet Loss Probability, Estimation, Large Deviation Theory, VPN service, Robust, LMI.

Abstract
Provisioning QoS for the MPLS VPN services over packet switched networks is increasingly important for network service providers. To provide QoS, prior works usually adopted only the proactive service admission approach. It is still an open issue to control QoS parameters after the service has been instantiated. In this type of feedback control system, the key components include system model, transducer and controller. The dynamic packet loss system has been identified in the previous study. However, the identified linear model contains time-varying and norm-bounded uncertain parameters. This paper tries to construct a complete dynamic control system to robust and optimally control the packet loss probability. A reactive packet loss probability estimator is proposed as the transducer. A robust and optimal controller is then designed for the identified system model, where a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) approach for designing the Proportional-Integral (PI) controller is studied. By a number of experiments, the transient and steady state performance of the control system is evaluated on the live NCIT*net network.

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